Opera Antonio Spadavecchia "The Gadfly" opera in four acts, seven scenes (concert performance) World famous Mariinsky Ballet and Opera Theatre - Opera and Concert Hall
Schedule for Antonio Spadavecchia "The Gadfly" opera in four acts, seven scenes (concert performance) 2022
Principal Chorus Master: Pavel Teplov Composer: Antonio Spadavecchia
Orchestra: Mariinsky Theatre Symphony Orchestra
Opera in 4 acts
The Gadfly is a 1958 Russian-language opera by the Soviet composer of Italian descent Antonio Spadavecchia based on the novel The Gadfly. It is set in Italy in 1834-48, one of the few Russian revolutionary operas to take a plot overseas, another being Kirill Molchanov's 1960 opera Del Corno Street following Vasco Pratolini's anti-fascist story set in Mussolini's Italy.
The composer Antonio Spadavecchia (1907–1988) and his opera The Gadfly
Happy is the composer whose melody – even if it’s just the one – becomes so
popular with the nation that the composer himself might not always be remembered
and at times is forgotten entirely. Such melodies include the magnificent La
Marseillaise and L’Internationale, the Christmas carols Silent Night, Holy Night
and The Forest Raised a Christmas Tree as well as many songs from the war years.
Older people who grew up in the post-war era will also remember another
wonderful cinematic fairy-tale – Cinderella directed by Nadezhda Kosheverova
featuring the great actors Faina Ranevskaya (the Stepmother) and Erast Garin
(the King) as well as the young Yanina Zhejmo (Cinderella). Her merry song Stand
up, Children, Stand in a Circle... was loved by children and adults alike and
became the “calling card” of the Russian composer Antonio Spadavecchia.
The name and surname “betray” the Italian ancestry of this People’s Artist of
the RSFSR. The composer’s grandfather the Garibaldian Nicolò Spadavecchia fought
with Garibaldi himself to free their country of foreign rule but after the
defeat during the Roman Uprising, in order to save himself from prosecution by
the authorities, he was forced to flee Italy to Russia with his family and
settled in Odessa.
The Garibaldian’s son Emmanuel became a sea captain while his grandson
Antonio, inheriting his family’s love of music (his father had a good knowledge
of Italian operas and his mother – a pianist – was trained in St Petersburg),
became a composer. One hundred years after the event he turned to the
occurrences of the national liberation movement in Italy when working on his
opera The Gadfly after the eponymous novel by Ethel Lilian Voynich.
Antonio Spadavecchia was born on 3 June 1907 in Odessa. Soon after Antonio’s
birth the family moved to Baku. Musical culture in the capital of Azerbaijan in
the 20s was very intense. Antonio went to concerts of chamber and symphony music
and he attended the opera house where he heard Prince Igor, Rusalka, Eugene
Onegin, The Demon, Carmen and Faust for the first time. Regular music lessons at
home ceased with the death of his mother when he was thirteen years old. After
leaving school Antonio became a sea cadet and later a sailor in the oil-tanker
fleet. But his interest in music would not go away: in 1926 Antonio
Spadavecchia, still with the fleet, began to attend evening classes at the Baku
Music Technical College. Later stages in his life included the music workers’
school of the Moscow Conservatoire where at the faculty of theory he was taught
by Nikolai Myaskovsky, Mikhail Gnessin, Anatoly Alexandrov and Igor Sposobin
until, in 1932, Antonio Spadavecchia became a conservatoire student in the
composition class of Vissarion Shebalin.
Already while still a student the composer-to-be’s interest in musical
theatre had been defined in principle. His works include overtures, instrumental
concerti, chamber ensembles and romances... But what he composed most were
operas, musical comedies, music for plays and films (in addition to the
aforementioned Cinderella there are such films as Brave People, Trial Period,
Kaine XVIII and Gutta-Percha Boy). It would take too long to list all of
Spadavecchia’s works for musical theatre, but the most important ones are the
operas Mistress of the Inn (after Carlo Goldini), The Road to Calvary (after
Alexei Tolstoy), The Good Soldier Švejk (after Jaroslav Hašek) and The Captain’s
Daughter (after Alexander Pushkin), the ballet The Shore of Hope and the musical
fairy-tale and play Cinderella... But inarguably it is his opera The Gadfly that
has enjoyed the greatest fame; following the world premiere in Perm (1957) it
was staged in Kharkov, Moscow, Novosibirsk, Kuibyshev, Lvov, Riga and other
cities in the USSR as well as in Bulgaria, Poland and the Czech Republic.
Ethel Voynich’s novel The Gadfly is particularly popular in Russia. The drama
of the protagonist Arthur is in an unresolvable contradiction between his
youthful purity, enthusiasm and the brutal reality of power – of the State and
of the Church. At confession the youth speaks honestly of the forthcoming
gathering of the Garibaldian revolutionaries. The priest, breaking the tradition
of the confessional, informs the police. Arthur inadvertently becomes guilty of
his friends’ being arrested. His beloved Gemma accuses him of treachery and
slaps him in the face. Arthur is surrounded by deceit – he learns that canon
Montanelli, whom he admired as a mentor and friend, is actually his father. Many
years later Arthur returns as a revolutionary calling himself Rivares – the
Gadfly. Gemma sees that Rivares is actually Arthur. When the armed Gadfly bursts
through a crowd of gendarmes Montanelli tells him to lay down his weapon. The
Gadfly is seized; too late, Montanelli realises he has sentenced his son to
death. The Gadfly accepts his sentence with no emotion and Montanelli curses
Heaven in pure rage...
The music of the opera is traditional and vividly emotional, rich in the
melodies of Italian songs and revolutionary hymns. To characterise the
protagonists the composer uses a system of leitmotifs, revealing their symphonic
development. One Italian newspaper picked up on the production of Antonio
Spadavecchia’s The Gadfly: “Although he is a follower of the Russian opera
school there is nevertheless a distinct Italian fingerprint on his work. Beyond
all doubt he often found inspiration in the opuses of Verdi and Puccini... But
he never copied them, because as a musician Spadavecchia is deeply individual,
his own man.” (Alfredo Glovine. Antonio Spadavecchia. La Voce della Regione, 12
December 1979). Iosif Raiskin
Schedule for Antonio Spadavecchia "The Gadfly" opera in four acts, seven scenes (concert performance) 2022
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